Civil War News was a set of 88 collectible trading cards issued in the early 1960s by Topps. The set featured the colorful artwork of Norman Saunders, as well as three other artists. The card set was characterized by vivid colors, graphic depictions of violence, death, and blood (card #21 'Painful Death' being a prime example) and exaggerations of warfare. On the reverse, each card contained a brief history of a campaign, battle, or person. The information was presented in newspaper-article fashion complete with a headline.
The complete set of cards, including a checklist, was first printed for the American market in 1962 to coincide with the centennial of the Civil War. A similar series with the same artwork was later issued in Canada. A&BC produced the sets in England. The cards came five to a wax pack with a stick of bubble gum. Also included in each package was a facsimile of Confederate paper currency. The original selling price was a nickel per package. Topps later issued the cards in cellophane-wrapped strips.
Tags:tradingcardsCivilWarNewsAdded: 9th February 2011Views: 3194Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

In 1913, the Indian Head nickel (commonly known as the buffalo nickel) was introduced, replacing the Liberty Head design that had been used since 1883. These were the first official strikings of nickels in 1913; the United States Mint's official records show no Liberty Head nickels were produced that year. Yet five Liberty Head nickels dated 1913 came to the attention of the numismatic community in 1920. All five were in the possession of Samuel Brown, a coin collector who attended the American Numismatic Association's annual convention and displayed the coins there. Brown had previously placed an advertisement in The Numismatist in December 1919 seeking information on these coins and offering to pay $500 for each. Ostensibly, the coins had been purchased as a result of this offer. However, Brown had been a Mint employee in 1913, so many numismatic historians have concluded that he illegally struck the coins himself and then removed them from the Mint. Other numismatic authorities, however, note there are several methods by which the coins could have been legitimately produced. For instance, they may have been lawfully issued by the Mint's Medal Department 'for cabinet purposes,' or they could be trial pieces struck in late 1912 to test the following year's new coinage dies. In January 1924 Brown sold all five 1913 Liberty Head nickels. The intact lot passed through the hands of several other coin dealers before finally being purchased by Colonel E.H.R. Green. Green kept them in his collection until his death in 1936. When his estate was auctioned, all five of the 1913 Liberty Head nickels were purchased by two dealers, Eric P. Newman and B.G. Johnson. The dealers broke up the set for the first time.
The fictional theft of one of the 1913 Liberty Head nickels (known as the Olsen specimen) was the focal point of a December 1973 episode of the popular police drama Hawaii Five-0. It was titled 'The $100,000 Nickel' (which indeed was the value of the coin at the time). Rumors of the existence of a sixth 1913 Liberty Head nickel occasionaly circulate. If one did surface in perfect condition, numismatic experts estimate it could command $20 million at auction. You might want to check your piggy bank... Tags:numismatics1913nickelrareAdded: 20th May 2011Views: 955Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

During the First world War, most of Canada's young able-bodied males enlisted in the military. As a result the quality of men's hockey dropped dramatically. For a short time, women's pro hockey took center stage--and Albertine Lapensee briefly and mysteriously became a superstar.
Nicknamed 'the Miracle Maid,' the 26-year-old Lapensee played for her hometown Cornwall (Ontario) Victorias. Her hockey debut came in January 1916 against Ottawa; she scored five of the six goals in Cornwall's victory. Immediately after her debut game, Ottawa players complained that she was really a man. Suspicions and accusations dogged her the rest of her brief career.
A week after her debut, Lapensee scored four goals in an 8-0 shutout against the Montreal Westerns before a crowd of about 3,000 fans. At one point the Montreal players yanked off Lapensee's toque to see how long her hair was. (She had braids that fell past her shoulders.)
The continuous rumors about Lapensee's gender prompted her hometown newspaper, the Cornwall Standard, to vouch for her. Miss Lapensee, it said, '...played more with her brothers and other boys than with her girlfriends, and this accounts for the masculine style of play she has developed.' Furthermore, 'Scores of people in East Cornwall have known her since her infancy.'
Albertine played on, indifferent to the rumours, and the fans didn't seem to mind too much either, as large crowds came to watch her play. In one game she scored 15 goals. When the Victorias agreed to play against the Ottawa Alerts, the Vics' manager had to guarantee Lapensee's appearance by contract. She even behaved like her male counterparts off the ice. She once refused to play until she had been paid, which nearly caused a riot.
Although scoring records for the time are incomplete, they indicate Albertine scored about 80 percent of Cornwall's goals in the 1916-1917 season. The next season, Lapensee led her team to an undefeated season.
Then, after two spectacular seasons, Albertine Lapensee vanished. There is no record of her playing hockey again--at least as Albertine Lapensee. Family legend says she went to New York in 1918 and had a sex change operation. She/he supposedly married and settled down to run a gas station near Cornwall under the name of Albert Smyth. There are no known photos of Lapensee. Her story is not widely known--not even in Canada.
Tags:hockeyAlbertineLapenseecontroversygenderAdded: 24th June 2011Views: 1308Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

In September 2010, baseball fans were thrilled by a remarkable dicovery: A complete kinescope copy of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series was found in Bing Crosby's wine cellar! How a near pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series — long believed to be lost forever — came to rest in the wine cellar of Bing Crosby’s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.
Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the World Series against the New York Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, recalled. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”
He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game Seven by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski famously hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees 10-9 at Forbes Field. It is considered one of the greatest and most memorable ballgames ever played.
Crosby apparently had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which sadly erased or discarded nearly all the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
A canny preservationist of all things, Crosby, who died in 1977, kept a half-century’s worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar-turned-vault in his Hillsborough, California home.
“Bing Crosby was way ahead of his time,” said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager for Major League Baseball Productions, the sport’s archivist. The kinescope was found quite by accident. A producer searching through Crosby's estate for material for a TV documentary on the late singer's career accidentally came upon five film cannisters marked '1960 World Series.' The 50-year-old game was first shown to a private audience in Pittsburgh that included surviving members of both teams. It was broadcast on the MLB Network in December 2010 and has since been made available to the general public on DVD.
Tags:1960WorldSeriesbaseballBingCrosbyAdded: 13th August 2011Views: 1216Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

NEW YORK (AP) – Nick Ashford, one-half of the legendary Motown songwriting duo Ashford & Simpson, has died at age 70.
His longtime friend and former publicist Liz Rosenberg told the Associated Press that Ashford — who along with wife Valerie Simpson wrote some of Motown's biggest hits — died Monday in a New York City hospital. He had been suffering from throat cancer and had undergone radiation treatment. Tags:NickAshford,Ashford,AshfordandSimpson,Obituary,Death,SolidAsARock,DiscoAdded: 22nd August 2011Views: 598Rating:Posted By:Old Fart

One of the great sports tragedies of the twentieth century was the Munich Air Disaster. It occurred on February 6, 1958, when British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany. On board the plane was the glamorous Manchester United football team, nicknamed the "Busby Babes" (after manager Matt Busby), along with a few supporters and sports journalists. Twenty of the 44 people on board the aircraft died instantly in the crash. The injured, some of whom had been knocked unconscious, were taken to the Rechts der Isar Hospital in Munich where three more died, resulting in a total of 23 fatalities with 21 survivors.
The team was returning from a European Cup match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, against Red Star Belgrade, but had to make a stop in Munich to refuel the aircraft. After refuelling, the pilots, Captains James Thain and Kenneth Rayment, attempted to take off twice, but had to abandon both attempts due to boost surging in the port engine. Fearing that they would get too far behind schedule, Captain Thain rejected an overnight stay in Munich in favour of a third take-off attempt. By the time of the third attempt, it had begun to snow, causing a layer of slush to build up at the end of the runway. When the aircraft hit the slush, it lost velocity, making take-off impossible. It plowed through a fence past the end of the runway, before the port wing hit a nearby house and was torn off. Fearing that the aircraft might explode, Captain Thain set about getting the surviving passengers as far away as possible. Despite this threat, Manchester United goalkeeper Harry Gregg remained behind to pull survivors from the wreckage.
An investigation by West German airport authorities originally blamed Captain Thain for the crash, claiming that he had failed to deice the wings of the aircraft, despite statements to the contrary from eyewitnesses. It was later established that the crash had, in fact, been caused by the build-up of slush on the runway, which had resulted in the aircraft being unable to achieve take-off velocity. Accordingly Thain's name was eventually cleared in 1968--a decade after the incident.
At the time of the disaster, Manchester United were trying to become only the third club to win three successive English league titles; they were six points behind League leaders Wolverhampton Wanderers with 14 games to go. They were also holders of the Charity Shield and had just advanced into their second successive European Cup semi-final. The team was also on an 11-match unbeaten run, and had advanced to the Fifth Round of the FA Cup tournament two weeks before the crash. Real Madrid won the European Cup in 1958, but team officials generously offered to have Manchester United declared the winners. This plan was not approved by UEFA, however. Manchester United did win the European Cup ten years later. Two of the survivors from 1958 were on that 1968 team.
Tags:soccerManchesterUniteddisasterairplaneAdded: 7th June 2012Views: 2061Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

At the prestigious annual Nathan's Hot Dog eating championship in 2001, a skinny, unheralded 23-year-old Japanese contestant named Takeru Kobayashi blew away the field by consuming 50 hot dogs (and buns!) in 12 minutes to double the previous world record. Organizers were so unprepared for Kobayashi's spectacular display of gluttony that they had to resort to hand-written signage to keep track of his astonishing total of devoured dogs. To prove it was no fluke, Kobayashi won the next five Fourth of July Coney Island classics too--with totals of 50, 50.5, 44.5, 53.5 and 53.75 hot dogs respectively. In 2007, despite downing a personal best 63 hot dogs, Kobayashi was upset by American upstart Joey Chestnut. Chestnut also get the better of Kobayashi in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, Kobayashi ran afoul of event organizers when he refused to sign an exclusive contract with Major League Eating, the organization that runs the Coney Island event. Kobayashi was actually arrested as an intruder at the 2010 event when he climbed onstage to congratulate Chestnut on another victory. Kobayashi, nicknamed "The Tsunami" has set several world records in other eating disciplines, such as bratwurst, hamburgers, lobster rolls, and rice balls. Tags:hotdogeatingTakeruKobayashiAdded: 7th July 2012Views: 581Rating:Posted By:Lava1964